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Perhaps you have heard the good news that the army met its recruitment goals for this year -- 80,000. Maybe we'll get to that great big military force McCain wants after all. Though do remember that from those 80,000 are pulled all the truck drivers, food handlers, machine greasers, and other kinds of people that make an army run -- it's not like they're all or even most going to go fight on the line, or whatever the hell you call it. And, if we do manage to recruit that great big new army it's mostly because we now admit people who once wouldn't have gotten in -- for their own good. As evidence, I offer the testimony of Reader J, who works in a medical capacity at the Veterans' Administration. She tells me that many of the Iraq vets are ... um ... well, just dumber than the vets of other wars. Perhaps the grenade launchers can be made with those pictorial instructions the Ikea people use. We can turn the international visual language of furniture into the language of war, and be happy, because we have a great big army, and no draft.